Brain cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat due to the brain’s own defense system known as the blood brain barrier (BBB). The blood brain barrier, which is meant to protect the brain from potential toxins, often prevents conventional chemotherapeutics from reaching brain tumors. Traditionally, high throughput testing of compound permeability through the BBB in vitro has been limited to assay of radio- or fluorophore-labeled compounds as they pass a cell monolayer growing on a permeable support system. Unfortunately, the labels themselves may impact the assay, and the ability to determine resulting tumor cytotoxicity must be studied independently. Here, we demonstrate a three dimensional (3D) model to study BBB transport as well as the resulting brain tumor cytotoxicity, by combining two commercially available products: Corning® 96 well spheroid microplates and the Corning HTS Transwell®-96 Tissue Culture System. Corning spheroid microplates are cell culture microplates with round well-bottom geometry coated with Corning Ultra-Low Attachment surface, enabling the formation of single multi-cellular tumor spheroids centered in each well in a highly reproducible manner. Corning HTS Transwells are permeable support systems commonly used for drug transport and migration/invasion studies. By replacing the standard flat-bottom Transwell receiver plate with a Corning spheroid microplate, we achieve the ability to study drug transport across the BBB and the resulting 3D glioma spheroid toxicity in an easy-to-use, 3D, high-throughput assay.

Primary Author - November Poster(s)

Hilary Sherman

Applications ScientistCorning IncorporatedKennebunk, ME

Hilary Sherman is an Applications Scientist in the Corning Life Sciences Lab located in Kennebunk, ME. Hilary has been with Corning Incorporated for 12 years and has worked with a wide variety of cell types including mammalian, insect, primary and stem cells in a vast array of applications. Her key roles at Corning involve creating technical documents such as protocols and SNAPPshots and providing technical support and training for both the Corning sales force as well as customers. Hilary received her B.S. degree in Biology from the University of New Hampshire in 2005.